Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Uh, let's hear it. Let's get
Speaker 1: a let's you know what, let's get a tupperware purp
Speaker 1: for our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2: Gross, no picture a tupperware purp. That is not right.
Speaker 2: It's like, do you do what?
Speaker 1: You're an old brown I've been bullets, yeah, breath, breath, tupperware.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh yeah, okay, yeah, there's that.
Speaker 3: We're gonna talk about the elephant the room, and it
Speaker 3: has to be Oblivion.
Speaker 2: Oblivion.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows this biggest news and gaming.
Speaker 1: We're recording on Tuesday, April twenty second, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: about eleven am local time. And uh during this time,
Speaker 1: during this recording, uh, we have asked our pal Max
Speaker 1: to pull some double duty and keep an eye on
Speaker 1: the news regarding Bethesda's latest re release of Oblivion, which
Speaker 1: is a game we enjoy.
Speaker 3: Also, jumping real quick, the serious thing that I actually
Speaker 3: wanted to put up here on the top. Happy four
Speaker 3: years boys?
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 3: Hey?
Speaker 2: For twenty was four years of me on the show.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, Yeah, congratulations to you, Max, and happy for
Speaker 2: twenty and happy Jesus' rebirthday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, step aside, Pope Francis, there's bigger news.
Speaker 2: I think he did step aside in a terminal kind
Speaker 2: of sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've we've been going back and forth about you know,
Speaker 1: the news is crazy these days, it's chaotic. People are
Speaker 1: in uncertain times, and so we decided off air that
Speaker 1: we were going to look into some stuff that is
Speaker 1: not necessarily breaking news, but a story that needs to
Speaker 1: be told. With the help of our research associate Ren Fellow,
Speaker 1: ridiculous historians, Noel Max and I are going to do
Speaker 1: some justice to the world of tupperware. We're going to
Speaker 1: tell you a story of an unsung hero you may
Speaker 1: not have heard of up to this point. Her name,
Speaker 1: real name, Brownie Wise. I think it's a cool name.
Speaker 2: It's a very cool name. It seems like a concept
Speaker 2: like being Brownie Wise. You know, a good brownie when
Speaker 2: you see it. Ben, you know, I'll tell you what
Speaker 2: I think whenever I hear the word tupperware, aside from
Speaker 2: you know, keeping my leftovers fresh is the idea of
Speaker 2: a Tupperware party? Yeah, I think we're gonna explore that
Speaker 2: a little bit today. And number two, that scene in
Speaker 2: Napoleon Dynamite where Uncle Rico is selling tupperware and he
Speaker 2: enlists I think Napoleon and Pedro to help out, and
Speaker 2: he does a thing where he like runs over a
Speaker 2: piece of tupperware. No, I know who it is. It's
Speaker 2: Napoleon's brother runs over a piece of tupperware in a
Speaker 2: van and it breaks, and then he just runs away
Speaker 2: or he drives away. That was the thing that I
Speaker 2: always remember hearing, like it's indestructible, this this tupperware.
Speaker 1: I love that we're bringing up film because I think
Speaker 1: of I want to say it was Edward Scissorhands. Isn't
Speaker 1: there like a tupperware party scene in there?
Speaker 2: It seems like there would be. It was very much
Speaker 2: about Suburbia. It was I think, well they did. The
Speaker 2: main character played by Dan we is a what is
Speaker 2: it Avon Avon lady. That's what it came. Ball mark
Speaker 2: of Suburbia was the Avon calling and the tupperware part,
Speaker 2: the direct marketing. Yeah, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: As Ren points out, if you have a plastic container
Speaker 1: that you use to store leftovers in your fridge or
Speaker 1: you know, in your bread basket or whatever. You probably
Speaker 1: casually referred to it as tupperware. In the United States.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that became a universal name
Speaker 1: like xerox or to Google, or band aid or Kleenex
Speaker 1: or you know, Frisbee, even a coke you know sometimes yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the old soda pop. And right now we're coming to
Speaker 1: you from the past. We want to rip off the
Speaker 1: band aid first and let you know that Tupperware as
Speaker 1: an organization, filed for bankruptcy in the fall of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four.
Speaker 2: Say it ain't so.
Speaker 1: I wish we could say it ain't so. Maybe it overturn.
Speaker 1: But in the Halcyon salad days, this company, NOL Tupperware
Speaker 1: was known for that business model we're describing and comparing
Speaker 1: to Avon. It relied upon people that you would describe
Speaker 1: as housewives, right, and they're often, unfortunately a population that
Speaker 1: is treated as though they were on the margins. And
Speaker 1: the idea was, look, we're not going to put this
Speaker 1: stuff immediately in stores. We're going to build a community
Speaker 1: around these products.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're selling an image with their stackable measuring
Speaker 2: cups and plastic pictures and party ware and you know,
Speaker 2: things for storing your leftovers. And it's sort of like
Speaker 2: pitched as this sort of innovative, sort of futuristic solution.
Speaker 2: This is back when, like if I'm not mistaken, plastic
Speaker 2: was still seen as kind of like a technological marvel.
Speaker 1: A real up and comer right in comparison to it.
Speaker 1: It's also ran material bake light for anybody who remembers
Speaker 1: bake like. So, look, we're all accustomed to story leftovers, hopefully.
Speaker 1: I know some people have some strong opinions about leftovers,
Speaker 1: but you know me, nol, I'm like a reduce, reuse,
Speaker 1: recycled kind of guy. So when I order takeout food
Speaker 1: or something, I do prioritize places that will give me
Speaker 1: reusable containers, so you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'll work through them and they'll eventually crack
Speaker 2: and stuff and I'll throw them away, but I definitely
Speaker 2: get use out of good quality to go containers. If
Speaker 2: you're looking for some real good ones in the Atlanta area,
Speaker 2: there's a local chain called Fresh to Order, and their
Speaker 2: plastic containers are second to none. I've got stacks and
Speaker 2: stacks of them as re inputs. It tumbling out of
Speaker 2: my kitchen cabinet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look at me. Just we're an audio podcast. But
Speaker 1: as you know, Noel MX, I reuse glass pasta jars
Speaker 1: as cups for coffee.
Speaker 2: You're a beljar man. Thank you. I'm going to take
Speaker 2: that as a compliment. We have a look.
Speaker 1: We all know the plastic container game here in the
Speaker 1: modern US, and we do often refer to those containers
Speaker 1: to your earlier point as tupperware, even if they're not
Speaker 1: technically tupperware. The reason this phrase and concept became so
Speaker 1: ubiquitous is not necessarily due to the inventor of tupperware.
Speaker 1: This is why we're on a mission in today's episode.
Speaker 1: We come to you to defend the reputation of a writer,
Speaker 1: a divorced mother, a brilliant mind, Brownie Wise.
Speaker 2: Brownie Wise, he said it earlier, the protagonist of our
Speaker 2: story versus, if we must, the big of our story,
Speaker 2: the guy tupper himself, the guy.
Speaker 1: Who invented, in a burst of humility, tupperware.
Speaker 2: Tupperware. But first, Ben, let's talk a little bit about plastic.
Speaker 2: Not just any plastic, okay, polyethylene.
Speaker 1: It's science, yeah, yeah, and it's science that is driven
Speaker 1: by necessity, right, the mother of invention. Travel back with us,
Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians. It's nineteen thirty seven. The Great Depression,
Speaker 1: which is still a terrible name, is very much in play.
Speaker 1: People are having just the roughest time. I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: history is always closer than it appears in the rear
Speaker 1: view mirror.
Speaker 2: Noel.
Speaker 1: Recently, after death in the family, I was going through
Speaker 1: some things at an estate and I found a cabinet.
Speaker 2: It's so weird.
Speaker 1: I found a cabinet that had in the back of
Speaker 1: it a collection of small rolled up string because they
Speaker 1: didn't want to throw away the string. In the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: they thought they might need it again.
Speaker 2: It was a frugal time, and you know, with everyone
Speaker 2: struggling to make ends meet, including companies you know, who
Speaker 2: were having our times selling their goods because people just
Speaker 2: couldn't afford to buy it. It's a sort of chain
Speaker 2: reaction that triggered a lot of companies going out of business.
Speaker 2: Of course, so while today maybe we couldn't picture a
Speaker 2: world without microplastics, you know, in plastics, the children and
Speaker 2: everything in all the things. Yeah, at the time, like
Speaker 2: we were saying, it was quite a new innovation in
Speaker 2: the day of Tupper, and companies were really eager to
Speaker 2: start to spin this new miracle material into gold. So
Speaker 2: Tupper was hired at a plastics factory, Ben, I believe
Speaker 2: you found the actual company name.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah, it's our our old friends at Dupond.
Speaker 2: Oh we've heard of them. They were kind of first
Speaker 2: to market in the old plastics game.
Speaker 1: They do a lot of material science, and they're also
Speaker 1: finding uses for various fossil fuel products of petros eight
Speaker 1: of course, right, yeah, all a pnopoly of products. We
Speaker 1: want to give a big shout out to Professor Marcia
Speaker 1: Bryant's writing for The Conversation back in twenty eighteen from
Speaker 1: Slag to Swag, the story of Earl Tupper's fantastic plastic. So,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, this guy, he's having a hard time,
Speaker 1: as is most of the American population, and he gets
Speaker 1: hired by a DuPont affiliated plastic company, plastics company to
Speaker 1: test prototypes. And look, he is not in a silver
Speaker 1: spoon situation. Earl Tupper at this point is not the
Speaker 1: villain of our story. Instead, he's a man trying to
Speaker 1: answer a question that he knows is common for so
Speaker 1: many people struggling with a challenging economy. He says, Look,
Speaker 1: it's hard enough to buy groceries. Less than half of
Speaker 1: America can afford a refrigerator. People are growing their own
Speaker 1: food in their backyard out of desperation. Surely there's a
Speaker 1: way that we could preserve food so it doesn't go
Speaker 1: to waste. And he came up with this idea. He said,
Speaker 1: what if we made a container out of this plastic
Speaker 1: that these DuPont guys are pigeon?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And I was just going to say,
Speaker 2: if it seems like you missed an opportunity for a
Speaker 2: good slogan here.
Speaker 1: Stretch your supper with Tupper, Ah stretcher supper with Tupper
Speaker 1: stretched their supper stood out to me as well in
Speaker 1: Wren's research. That's that's a really good turn of phrase. Look,
Speaker 1: the issue was the material science wasn't quite there yet.
Speaker 1: The existing substances that Tupper was working with were not
Speaker 1: super ductile.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like uncle, because probably less than a subpar plastic containers.
Speaker 2: I mean, granted he probably shouldn't run over regular typeware
Speaker 2: with a van either, but it would crack when under
Speaker 2: pressure in even before it reached market. In the molding process.
Speaker 2: It was a flaw of the way this plastic that
Speaker 2: they were using was being manufactured.
Speaker 1: So this guy is looking for his golden goose, right,
Speaker 1: the holy grail, the next step in material science, and
Speaker 1: he starts taking little pieces of different types of plastic
Speaker 1: home and experimenting on his own time, you know, off
Speaker 1: the books. He eventually lands upon something called polyethylene. Nobody
Speaker 1: had thought to test polyethylene for its ductility because it
Speaker 1: was considered a byproduct. It was considered kind of a
Speaker 1: trash plastic people, kind of like.
Speaker 2: Bacon back in the day of Edward Burnet's. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: like the idea that you could a by product like
Speaker 2: bacon of a slaughtering process, a manufacturing process to create
Speaker 2: pork chops or pork products, and what was seen as
Speaker 2: something that to be discarded or as like trash meat
Speaker 2: in that situation was ultimately spun into a marketing miracle
Speaker 2: by Edward Burnet's early stuff that I want you to
Speaker 2: know episodes about the Father of Marketing there you can
Speaker 2: check out. But this is even more like a functional thing,
Speaker 2: this byproduct that was referred to by the folks that
Speaker 2: you know, we're manufacturing this stuff as slag. Tupper saw
Speaker 2: something in it, literally, the idea that it could potentially
Speaker 2: be more durable and be molded because of some properties
Speaker 2: that he found in it when kind of digging into
Speaker 2: the samples that he brought back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is to be fair, after he's taken
Speaker 1: multiple samples of things we will call slag in the
Speaker 1: plastics industry and tested them at home. So travel with
Speaker 1: us to Tupper's kitchen. He's at home in his kitchen,
Speaker 1: and like you were saying, no, he says, wow, this polyethylene.
Speaker 1: It is stinky. It is slag, but you can melt it,
Speaker 1: and his kitchen probably smelled terrible. If we're being honest
Speaker 1: at this point. You can melt it and you can
Speaker 1: put it into a mold and it's not going to break.
Speaker 1: This is where he starts returning to the you know,
Speaker 1: to his day job and saying, guys, let's call it
Speaker 1: poly t material of the future.
Speaker 2: The issue now is.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we got two issues. First, the issue is
Speaker 1: the smell. Second, the if you haven't thought about the smell. Second,
Speaker 1: the issue is the lid. Right now, we can make
Speaker 1: a bowl. How do we make a lid?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is confusing to me. Maybe you can
Speaker 2: help shed some light on this, the idea that there
Speaker 2: was a catch that, like, you know, people were used
Speaker 2: to just closing a bell jar, a Mason jar with
Speaker 2: a screw top, but there was like a an extra step.
Speaker 2: I guess before you were storing your stuff. I guess
Speaker 2: you wanted to get the air out of it, or
Speaker 2: get as much air out as possible, so you had
Speaker 2: to burp the seal, and it was tough. Smithsonian Magazine
Speaker 2: points out for people who were accustomed to glass jars
Speaker 2: and ceramic containers to kind of figure this out. And
Speaker 2: maybe I'm just spoiled by a life of luxury surrounded
Speaker 2: by Tupperware, But I guess I don't understand the I know,
Speaker 2: a Tupperware burp is referred to as the sound that
Speaker 2: it makes when that seal is released, But what does
Speaker 2: this mean? The idea that like you had to burp it, it.
Speaker 1: Really means you had to teach the population how to
Speaker 1: use the product. And I love that we're pointing out
Speaker 1: Smithsonian because Kat Eschner did some fantastic work in her
Speaker 1: article The Story of Brownie Wise, the ingenious marketer behind
Speaker 1: the Tupperware Party Light spoiler. It makes sense. We've talked
Speaker 1: about it before. With other big rollouts of new products,
Speaker 1: you kind of have to teach the people or normalize
Speaker 1: the consumer base towards certain behaviors. So, like you were saying, Noel,
Speaker 1: if you are used to canning, right, you got your
Speaker 1: mason jar and you got your screwtop lid, you already
Speaker 1: know about soda at this point, and how to open
Speaker 1: cans right the can opener as an invention already the
Speaker 1: people who are making tupperware are trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to teach folks this extra step. You've got to
Speaker 1: leverage up one corner of the container and then push
Speaker 1: down a little bit to get that excess air out.
Speaker 2: That's what it is for sure, yep. And then you
Speaker 2: know and it's not like required, but he was pitching
Speaker 2: this as a tried and true method for getting the
Speaker 2: most out of your preservation right of your food. So
Speaker 2: a good example too is if you used to maybe
Speaker 2: using plastic wrap. I learned this back when I first
Speaker 2: worked in a restaurant in my in my younger days.
Speaker 2: But you put plastic wrap on the top of the thing,
Speaker 2: and you're supposed to push it down so that the
Speaker 2: air gets forced out of the sides, and it almost
Speaker 2: creates like a vacuum seal where it kind of, you know,
Speaker 2: bows inward a little bit. It's just a simpler method
Speaker 2: of doing say what like a vacuum sealer food saver
Speaker 2: situation does, where it literally sucks all the air out.
Speaker 2: But by lifting that lid and pushing down a little
Speaker 2: bit and forcing that air out, you're gonna do exactly
Speaker 2: what the best possible sales pitch for this thing was,
Speaker 2: preserve your food for longer.
Speaker 1: And this is where we introduce our protagonist Max a
Speaker 1: little bit of protagonist music, if we may, for the
Speaker 1: one the only Brownie Wise, while not the inventor of
Speaker 1: what we call Tupperware, Brownie Wise is I would argue
Speaker 1: the reason Tupperware is still considered a thing today.
Speaker 2: For sure. She had a vision.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she has a vision. She knows how to speak
Speaker 1: with the people, right and at this time, tupper they're
Speaker 1: calling the new invention the wonder Bull. And you've probably
Speaker 1: seen a picture of this or you've probably you might
Speaker 1: have one in your cabinet. Now let's learn a little
Speaker 1: bit about Brownie Wise.
Speaker 2: She is from Georgia, that's right, rural Georgia born in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirteen. A bit of a mystery in terms of
Speaker 2: her backstory. We do know that she dropped out of
Speaker 2: school at the age of fourteen to work with her
Speaker 2: mother as an organizer for union, the hat makers Union,
Speaker 2: And from a very very early age she had a
Speaker 2: lot of drive. She was a dreamer. She had that
Speaker 2: vision very early on. She wanted to be a writer
Speaker 2: and an illustrator. And in nineteen thirty six she won
Speaker 2: a chance to paint a mural at the Texas Centennial,
Speaker 2: which is call back to another Rent episode, a World's
Speaker 2: Fair exhibition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great stuff. And while she's in Texas for this fair,
Speaker 1: she meets a guy named Robert and she kind of
Speaker 1: digs them, and later they get married. Robert is in
Speaker 1: charge of an exhibit for the Ford Motor Company at
Speaker 1: the World's Fair or at the Texas Centennial. When they
Speaker 1: get together, picture every amazing rom com meet you you've
Speaker 1: ever seen. They eventually have one child, Jerry, and then
Speaker 1: they move to Detroit. While they're in Detroit, Brownie Wise,
Speaker 1: who was always a very talented writer and illustrator, we
Speaker 1: know that she would contribute to a column called Experience
Speaker 1: published in Detroit News. It's a reader's forum wherein people
Speaker 1: write under different pseudonyms like jin wis so uh no,
Speaker 1: Canci get it uh and hippity hop.
Speaker 2: Way ahead of his time. They invented hip hop back
Speaker 2: in Detroit in the thirties. So whys had her own
Speaker 2: pen name, and it was Hibiscus. That just sounds very
Speaker 2: southern and genteel Hibiscus and Hibiscus, as I guess in
Speaker 2: the role in the character, that the sort of lore
Speaker 2: she was stilled the world building, uh huh. She had
Speaker 2: a devoted husband by the name of Yankee. Despite his
Speaker 2: unwavering love, She missed her family mansion back home in Mississippi.
Speaker 2: Oh how long? How long for the indeed, with a
Speaker 2: mint julib on the porch, the conveniences, as she put it,
Speaker 2: of a Southern bell. Hibiscus and Wise were very much
Speaker 2: too completely different. Becau's not the real story. This is
Speaker 2: so funny. It's sad.
Speaker 1: It's so sad because Hibiscus, although Brownie Wise is writing
Speaker 1: this character, Hibiscus is not real and Brownie is leading
Speaker 1: a very different life.
Speaker 2: Her husband Robert.
Speaker 1: From this centennial that we talked about earlier. He is
Speaker 1: nothing like the strapping Yankee. He is addicted to booze.
Speaker 1: He is also abusive. Eventually the couple divorces. It's nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two, so divorce is still very unfair to women
Speaker 1: in this country for sure. And now she's a single mother.
Speaker 1: She's still got Jerry. Like you said, she has dropped out.
Speaker 1: She doesn't have too much formal education to speak of.
Speaker 2: It's the height.
Speaker 1: Of World War two, so things are already not great again,
Speaker 1: and she's working multiple it's like a gig economy, right,
Speaker 1: she has coperate jobs.
Speaker 2: And then she finds her way to sort of a
Speaker 2: proto version of the business model that we're are really
Speaker 2: you know, getting to the idea of being a door
Speaker 2: to door salesman. You know, you hear a lot more
Speaker 2: of our salesperson rather I go. You hear a lot
Speaker 2: more about that business model from this air aisle. You
Speaker 2: think about death of a salesman, for example the Tennessee
Speaker 2: Williams play, and just the idea of like being a
Speaker 2: vacuum cleaner salesman, where you like bring the little bag
Speaker 2: of dirt and pour it on the ground and then
Speaker 2: like show how you can vacuum it up or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sell it encyclopedias or knives, or there's a great
Speaker 1: documentary now parody selling clobes. One of the uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I told you guys, one of the
Speaker 1: weirdest comedy sketches I ever wrote was you know how
Speaker 1: you love to take a notion or a dumb initial
Speaker 1: idea and just see how four you can go with it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pitch it to you guys now, door to
Speaker 1: door door salesman. Yeah, it's like buying luggage at the airport.
Speaker 2: I love it. Thank you for the support of that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if I can jump in here real quick, We've
Speaker 3: already referenced one timber in film, so I think we
Speaker 3: should reference another one, which is a big fish. Which
Speaker 3: in Big Fish Ewan McGregor's character, who's like the younger
Speaker 3: father thing. Watch the movie. He sells door to door
Speaker 3: like it's a hand that holds things because the fish
Speaker 3: is always is kind of a movie that's like a
Speaker 3: little bit off and one of my favorite things about
Speaker 3: because obviously I came out after Edwards Scissorhands. They were
Speaker 3: very intentional because the thing was the hand would hold
Speaker 3: a bunch of different things. They made sure for it
Speaker 3: to never have scissors in the hand.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: I guess perfect a solution to a problem that doesn't
Speaker 1: exist for most people. That's what made for TV products. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I love it to just give everybody a sense of
Speaker 1: how far down the rabbit hole we walked on that sketch, which,
Speaker 1: as stute listeners can find on YouTube. I imagine the
Speaker 1: door to door door salesman sells doors themed doors like
Speaker 1: Jim Morrison. Oh that's a galaxy brain to me, dude.
Speaker 1: So Brownie Wise, like you were saying, is already getting
Speaker 1: her feet on the street.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: She's selling these Stanley Home products knock knock, ring the doorbell,
Speaker 1: walking into people's homes and saying, check out this cleaning product. Here,
Speaker 1: these cool brushes, maybe a vacuum cleaner. She looks around, right,
Speaker 1: she's the top seller at this point for Stanley Home products,
Speaker 1: and she says, hang on, what's this tupperware thing? I
Speaker 1: go on a tick.
Speaker 2: What's this? Why isn't it selling? Well?
Speaker 1: The wonder bowl is a great idea.
Speaker 2: Yes, and she kind of had to ask herself why,
Speaker 2: Like what this doesn't make sense? This is such a
Speaker 2: great idea, such a great concept must have something to
Speaker 2: do with the communication with the public that these things
Speaker 2: should potentially be absolutely blowing up with, which led her
Speaker 2: to this concept of burping the container before putting into
Speaker 2: the fridge. So Wise kind of figured that she could
Speaker 2: come up with a better way of selling this stuff
Speaker 2: to the public, specifically to housewives. Housewives we talked about
Speaker 2: that she understood their lives. She was able to kind
Speaker 2: of speak that language because that was her absolute background,
Speaker 2: especially in being a single mother, having to stretch the
Speaker 2: food that she puts on the table coming by this stuff. Honestly,
Speaker 2: she figured that she could sell this product using the
Speaker 2: home party method that she had learned at Stanley. M M.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And a home party method means that our protagonist,
Speaker 1: our hero of this story, Brownie Wise, is not just
Speaker 1: going door to door solo. She is introducing people to
Speaker 1: a community. So now we can have folks get together
Speaker 1: and talk about how much they love Stanley home products.
Speaker 1: She thinks, maybe I could build a community around Tupperware. Again,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to be a single mother, right, She's
Speaker 1: a single bomb. Quite motivated. She moves with her son
Speaker 1: from Detroit over to Florida and she found her own
Speaker 1: company called Tupperware Patio parties, I like saying Patio. So
Speaker 1: Whise started hosting tupperware parties at her own home, and
Speaker 1: while she was at these parties, she would tell people like,
Speaker 1: she would solve the problem Earl tupper couldn't figure out.
Speaker 1: She would normalize the idea of burping the tupperware, like
Speaker 1: showing you how to do it, and she also would
Speaker 1: make it just like a cool hang It's a cool
Speaker 1: house party. That's what she nailed.
Speaker 2: Very community focused. I mean, I would argue that there's
Speaker 2: a lot of, you know, outside of the marketing genius
Speaker 2: of it all, this was a time where folks were
Speaker 2: feeling kind of isolated, you know, and then to give
Speaker 2: them a reason to kind of connect with other like
Speaker 2: minded or you know, people from the same background in
Speaker 2: their community. I think that's really neat that she was
Speaker 2: kind of fostering that with these tupperwear parties, and she
Speaker 2: also kind of had a bit of flair while she
Speaker 2: would demonstrate, you know, the technique of burping the tupperwaar,
Speaker 2: normalizing and making it part of it obviously household naming
Speaker 2: the concept of a tupperware burp. While I didn't really
Speaker 2: fully understand before this exactly what it was referring to
Speaker 2: I certainly knew the term, and you can thank Wise
Speaker 2: for that. She also speaking of flair a little bit
Speaker 2: of theatricality. She would toss around to the folks attending
Speaker 2: the party a bowl, one of those tupperware bowls full
Speaker 2: of grapefruit je showing that it wouldn't leak. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, the wonder bowl is sort of the flagship product
Speaker 1: at this point, and she would take grape juice, demo, grape.
Speaker 2: Juice, Yes, grape fruits. Yeah, yeah, even better because like
Speaker 2: that's the scary stuff that I know will stay right.
Speaker 1: The class ad banter, the pattern we used to call
Speaker 1: it back in the UK. And she is able to
Speaker 1: take this wonder bowl, show people how to successfully close
Speaker 1: the lid and burp the tupperware, and yeah, she's thrown around,
Speaker 1: Look this will leak, which is amazing. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: take long, It's less than a year. It's just a
Speaker 1: few months. And Brownie Wise has expanded tupperware patio parties.
Speaker 1: Now she has not quite franchising, but she has tupperware dealers,
Speaker 1: she has a crew. She's building out the organization such
Speaker 1: that there are home party managers, most of whom are women,
Speaker 1: and they are running the game as well. So we
Speaker 1: have to understand the context. Right, this is post World
Speaker 1: War two at this point, and the US needed needed resources, right,
Speaker 1: needed employees. So women entered the workforce at an unprecedented
Speaker 1: level for the country. But now that the war is
Speaker 1: over and these men are returning, they're taking these women's jobs,
Speaker 1: and there's this huge, incredibly unfair cultural push to put
Speaker 1: women away from public workforce, right and put them back
Speaker 1: into the kitchen, back into the housewives situation. There's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with whatever path people choose to take on their own,
Speaker 1: as long as you're not hurting people. But a lot
Speaker 1: of women felt that they were unfairly getting pushed out
Speaker 1: of the workforce.
Speaker 2: This was not a glass ceiling.
Speaker 1: This was a matter of US companies aggressively firing women,
Speaker 1: pushing them out for nothing other than misogyny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean, like it's one of those
Speaker 2: things where it's like, oh, you're we're good enough to
Speaker 2: take your jobs while you're away at war, but when
Speaker 2: you're back, it's like you just toss this out, like
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I don't mean to speak for women, but
Speaker 2: certainly the sentiment and the idea of you know, really
Speaker 2: carrying the weight while the men were off at war
Speaker 2: and then being treated like second class citizens. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: no appreciation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as a result, there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: in this demographic who want to continue working in some capacity, right,
Speaker 1: And so these folks hear about Brownie wise, they hear
Speaker 1: about tupperware patio parties, and they want to get involved
Speaker 1: in the business because now it is a thing they
Speaker 1: can do that is gainful employment and is less unfair.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say completely unfair, but it's less
Speaker 1: unfair than the rest of the American job market.
Speaker 2: I guess that's looked at as like safe for something,
Speaker 2: you know, the powers to be here. It's sort of like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, let them have that little topperware parties, you know,
Speaker 2: which is incredibly dismissive and gross, you know, in retrospect,
Speaker 2: but it was it was a place that they could go.
Speaker 2: And not to mention, the TopWare company was also very
Speaker 2: diverse and it's hiring practices. You would see black women
Speaker 2: coming from urban and rural areas participating in these Tupperware
Speaker 2: parties and again stretching out these networks to other areas
Speaker 2: where they live.
Speaker 1: And this is incredibly successful. The secret to Wise's success,
Speaker 1: by the way, is not entirely based on the Stanley
Speaker 1: Home Products model. It's the community that she builds. She
Speaker 1: has a great She has a great quotation that we
Speaker 1: found in Smithsonian and a couple of other places. Wise,
Speaker 1: one said if you build the people, they'll build the business,
Speaker 1: which I thought was super insightful. And of course this
Speaker 1: is where our turn occurs.
Speaker 2: Noal, because it is insightful. It's a little on the
Speaker 2: corp pretty side. He could look at it as the
Speaker 2: corp pretty kind of slightly decermonizing way of looking at things.
Speaker 2: But I don't know that that's how she intended it.
Speaker 2: But I guess maybe be hindsight, it.
Speaker 1: Might be our internalized BIS.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right, That's what I'm getting dot. So this
Speaker 2: was the turn though, however, right, this is a point
Speaker 2: where the world changed and Tupperware somewhat got left behind.
Speaker 1: So here's our turn. We introduced the guy, the inventor,
Speaker 1: Earl Tupper, right, the dude smuggling plastic pieces and slag
Speaker 1: into his home. It's the early nineteen fifties. Earl Tupper,
Speaker 1: inventor of the Wonder Bowl, is following the Tupperware boom
Speaker 1: in Florida. What's going on down there? What's up with
Speaker 1: this patio company? H And he does his homework. He
Speaker 1: is incredibly impressed. He is astonished at how great Brownie
Speaker 1: Wise is at at popularizing Tupperware, which, to be clear,
Speaker 1: it was, uh it was a chestnut he himself could
Speaker 1: not crack, or a walnut he could not crack.
Speaker 2: You're both difficult to crack anyway. Well, it's tough to
Speaker 2: crack a tough nut, all right. Well he can't get
Speaker 2: that tree nut.
Speaker 1: And so he reaches out to Brownie Wise and he says, look,
Speaker 1: you're awesome. You are so good at this. You have
Speaker 1: pretty much saved this product. Please be vice president of
Speaker 1: the entire company, my company. So Earl Tupper knows a
Speaker 1: good idea when he sees it, and after or based
Speaker 1: on his conversations with Brownie Wise, he switches the sales
Speaker 1: strategy of Tupperware Company entirely to this home party, build
Speaker 1: the community field, a dreams type plan. This direct marketing,
Speaker 1: and this is a huge boom to Tupperware. American culture
Speaker 1: now is in that golden post World War two era,
Speaker 1: right the time of retro futurism atop atomic energy, making
Speaker 1: the world clean despite all the unclean things Adam Baumbs did.
Speaker 1: And now we see a booming middle class. People are
Speaker 1: buying cars, more people of refrigerators, two point five kids,
Speaker 1: nuclear family at home. Entertaining becomes a fixture of social life.
Speaker 1: This is also just side note for our friends at Savor.
Speaker 1: This is where you see a lot of just terrible cookbooks.
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, they'remember lots of lots of mayonnaise based stuff,
Speaker 2: lots of gelat elat based stuff, meat gelatines in fact,
Speaker 2: is that I think the biggest gross out. They're all
Speaker 2: meant to be these like center pieces kind of and
Speaker 2: they're just so hideous. It's like aspect and.
Speaker 1: I appreciated as sculpture but maybe not food.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe not. It's definitely was. It was definitely a
Speaker 2: vibe for sure. And the cookbooks were everywhere and they
Speaker 2: are a lot of fun if you get a hold
Speaker 2: of them. We actually did an episode quite a while
Speaker 2: back on Gelatine on like Jello cookbooks, and we talk
Speaker 2: about all this stuff. So check going out if you
Speaker 2: can find it. And to your point, bent about you know,
Speaker 2: neo futurism and all of that good stuff. Tupperware is
Speaker 2: perfect for that because it's sort of pitched as this
Speaker 2: like miracle material, and now there's ways of like making
Speaker 2: it fun colors, you know, and different kinds of stackability
Speaker 2: and accessories and things that link together. It's such a
Speaker 2: valueable material by its very nature that you can pretty
Speaker 2: much mold it into whatever shape you want. And that
Speaker 2: starts to kind of catch up with the change in
Speaker 2: demographic where now people are doing a little bit better.
Speaker 2: The Great Depression is a little further in the rearview mirror.
Speaker 2: You have a new kind of middle class coming up,
Speaker 2: and people are like having parties, not tupperware parties, like
Speaker 2: hosting events, you know, gatherings or whatever. So they put
Speaker 2: out like I think it was like a section serving
Speaker 2: platter that you can kind of put different dips or whatever,
Speaker 2: crew tita perhaps gelatine based items in there. But all
Speaker 2: of this very much been to your point, matches up
Speaker 2: with the kind of images you'd see in some of
Speaker 2: these cookbooks in terms of like the spread and highlighting
Speaker 2: the use of the microwave for example. All of this
Speaker 2: like the atomic age kind of of you know, futuristic living.
Speaker 2: They really thought they were, you know, on the cutting edge.
Speaker 1: Hey, what do you think about us doing commercials from
Speaker 1: the past in future?
Speaker 2: You must there's so many good ones, and all of
Speaker 2: that would be public domain audio stuff, so we could
Speaker 2: find a ton of great clips and make it like
Speaker 2: a audio clip show. I love it, Ben, Let's do it,
Speaker 2: all right, let's do it, Nol.
Speaker 1: We also know that by nineteen fifty four, Supperware is
Speaker 1: just running the game. They're amazing at this The sales
Speaker 1: have reached twenty four million US dollars. And if we
Speaker 1: could do an inflation calculator here and a dude about
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, twenty four million dollars in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five money, that is slight drum roll, two hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty four million, six hundred and eighty two thousand, eight
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five dollars.
Speaker 2: That's a lot. That is indeed a lot. When I
Speaker 2: first looked at it, I think I added some extra
Speaker 2: the decimal places and thought it was hundreds of billions
Speaker 2: of dollars. But still impressive, Still impressive, Still impressive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you were saying earlier, there are over twenty
Speaker 1: thousand dealers direct marketers and the Tupperware network. And I
Speaker 1: love this point about the diversity right, the fact that
Speaker 1: we have black women who are given an opportunity, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean that would maybe not ordinarily occur
Speaker 1: in orthodox industry. And they're saying, look, Tupperware is not
Speaker 1: just white, suburban you know, matchbook House. Hell, this speaks
Speaker 1: to universal need for so many people. And you also mentioned,
Speaker 1: of course, Brownie Wise is a female executive at a
Speaker 1: time where that is quite rare. She doesn't have a
Speaker 1: ton of mentors. So if we go to another Smithsonian
Speaker 1: Magazine article from the writer Bob Keeling, we'll see this
Speaker 1: argument that without a community appears Brownie Wise sought to
Speaker 1: create one, which is really inspiring.
Speaker 2: It super is. And lest we forget that, mister tupper
Speaker 2: himself was you know, introduced as our big bad you
Speaker 2: may think to yourself, thus far, he's doing so much
Speaker 2: great stuff for women, and Brownie Wise made or the
Speaker 2: executive and everything. At the end of the day, though, folks,
Speaker 2: he was pretty much just as bad as as many
Speaker 2: of the men in leadership that tossed women aside in
Speaker 2: the workplace. He was more enamored with the idea and
Speaker 2: he saw dollar signs you know, dancing over Wise's head
Speaker 2: and a little less concerned with the human being.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he became Look, they needed each other for
Speaker 1: Tupperware to work, but Earl Tupper grew envious. He grew
Speaker 1: jealous because Brownie Wise was getting headlines.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean. She was the face of
Speaker 2: the company. She was a face of the.
Speaker 1: Company, sort of like how you would see, oh, who's
Speaker 1: that amazing act her who does the progressive commercials?
Speaker 2: Like, oh, what she's talking about the guy from oz Oh.
Speaker 1: Sure that guy too. Yeah, but you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like she became a par.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. Now, there's so many celebrities are doing stuff
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: So she is reaching celebrity, right, that's the point. She
Speaker 1: is the as you said, public face. People are associating
Speaker 1: Brownie Wise with Tupperware, and it's great for the business.
Speaker 1: But Earl Tupper is being a bit of a drip
Speaker 1: about it. He's saying, why is this person, you know,
Speaker 1: popular as high school as it towns And so he
Speaker 1: is consistently getting hostile with Brownie Wise. He starts to
Speaker 1: micromanage the stuff she does, even though she knows what works. Obviously,
Speaker 1: around nineteen fifty seven, Tupper is actively seeking to cut
Speaker 1: Brownie Wise from his company, and that's where we reach
Speaker 1: a disastrous moment in Tupperware history. It is a luau
Speaker 1: gone wrong.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. At first I'm looking at this and I'm like,
Speaker 2: these Tupperware related injuries, I don't understand now. They were
Speaker 2: apparently weather related injuries. Several folks sustained injuries at this
Speaker 2: party due to some unforeseen bad weather, and this led
Speaker 2: to some lawsuits against the Tupperware company that went on
Speaker 2: for many years. Very interesting though. We were talking off
Speaker 2: Mike about what would lead to a legitimate claim in
Speaker 2: a situation like this, and I guess you could be
Speaker 2: sued for liability or maybe negligence. So in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 2: having gotten the excuse that he was looking for, Tupper
Speaker 2: fired Wise from the company. And I believe she'd received
Speaker 2: no stock options and was just paid one year's salary
Speaker 2: as severance.
Speaker 1: Which is an absolute ripoff. You know, this weather was
Speaker 1: beyond her control. It's a private island on a lake
Speaker 1: in Kissimee, Florida, but there are a ton of people there.
Speaker 1: They're like twelve hundred people there. So this is, as
Speaker 1: you were saying, an opportunistic move on Tupper's part. Look
Speaker 1: her Brownie Wise. Her life continues post Tupperware. She starts
Speaker 1: cosmetic companies using this sales model that if we're honest
Speaker 1: she created. None of them are quite you know, like
Speaker 1: Avon level. They're not super successful. She passes away in
Speaker 1: Florida in Kissemi in nineteen ninety two. She is seventy
Speaker 1: nine years old, and she was a part of buried history.
Speaker 1: Put away as though she was placed in some sort
Speaker 1: of proverbial tupperware container, a tomb a tupperware toom, a
Speaker 1: Tupperware mausoleum. Yeah, until twenty sixteen, and that's when the
Speaker 1: Tupperware Company donated two one hundred thousand US dollars to
Speaker 1: name a park after her near their corporate headquarters in Orlando.
Speaker 2: And if you go to the official website of the
Speaker 2: Tupperware Company, you can find mention of Brownie Wise in
Speaker 2: their official company backstory.
Speaker 1: And with that, we have to give a shout out
Speaker 1: to an absolute badass. I hope I can say badass
Speaker 1: on air. Ben Thompson or colleague from Badass of the
Speaker 1: Week probably knows and loves this story. Big, big, thanks
Speaker 1: to our super producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to.
Speaker 1: Our research associate Ren for bringing some justice to the
Speaker 1: untold story of Brownie Wise.
Speaker 2: Whose do we think? Ooh ooh, real quick, I just
Speaker 2: want to say I went to Tupperware dot com and
Speaker 2: despite having declared bankruptcy in twenty twenty four, that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean the company has gone and you there is a
Speaker 2: link at the very top that says host a party,
Speaker 2: so they very much are still carrying on that legacy
Speaker 2: of Brownie Wise to this very day. Huge thanks to
Speaker 2: Max Williams, superproducer extraordinaire Alex Williams who composed this bang
Speaker 2: and Bob.
Speaker 1: Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Twister Big Big
Speaker 1: thanks of course to aj Bahamas Jacobs who does listen
Speaker 1: to the show. Thank you, Bahamas Big. Thanks to Rachel
Speaker 1: Big Spinach Lance. If you like our show, please check
Speaker 1: out the Rude dudes at Ridiculous Crime, good friends of ours,
Speaker 1: and they also will bring justice to buried history.
Speaker 2: Man. If y'all want to get I'm on this Tupperware party,
Speaker 2: you can receive a free host gift special with five
Speaker 2: hundred dollars in party sales Tupperware Wave Stack cooker. It's
Speaker 2: like one of those microwave cover things to keep it
Speaker 2: from splashing. Or actually it's a cast throw and to
Speaker 2: colinder all in one. My mistake. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2: For more podcast us from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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